KULAS : TORONTO HEALEY'S 12.6.02

Setlist : A Clever Mess, Pavement, Having & Losing It All, Starland, The Only One, Burning Down Hollywood, Glasgow Rain, Hallelujah.

review by brd

Another quiet night from Kulas. 

Here we were in a nice intimate downstairs room, owned by famed Toronto blues/rock guitarist Jeff Healey (with his pictures with various celebrities adorning the walls. My table was watched by Jeff and ZZ Top in rock star pose), waiting to see/hear what Kulas had to offer us tonight.  Michael's acoustic sets are always emotionally charged - the simple setting with just an acoustic guitar gives one no choice but to focus one his powerful vocal delivery, something which a full band setting, despite the variety that context provides, seems to detract from somewhat.

This was the case in particular with the trio of songs from Kulas' yet to be released third album: Pavement, Starland, and Glasgow Rain.  Though I could hear the full band playing in the back of my mind, the poignancy of these songs in the solo acoustic setting was just startling. And as Michael's brief set went on, he gave the audience a good balance between technical perfection and feeling - his sets, whether solo or with band, generally have grown in confidence each night, and lately Kulas is ready to take on the world. 

Most of the material tonight has been heard both in a band and a solo acoustic context by Toronto audiences over the past few months since Kulas' return to the city in January: the aforementioned yet to be released trio of songs, as well as The Only One, one of my favourite songs off his latest cd Another Small Machine (ASM), and Burning Down Hollywood, the radio play song off his first cd, Mosquito.  Exceptions which have been heard as solo undertakings even with the full band were set opener A Clever Mess (from Mosquito), with its long intricate guitar intro, and the breath taking closer Hallelujah by Montreal song-writer Leonard Cohen (but hey we got slightly shortchanged tonight - Michael did not sing the closing section up an octave as he usually does).

As he often does, Kulas provided a bit of insight tonight into the meaning of some of his lyrics:  in his introduction of the first public performance of ASM's Having and Losing It All, he explained that this song described his life in the UK after joining UK band James in 1997.  Early on, Kulas' experience seemed to approach nirvana - everything was going great, life was wonderful &ldots;  then one day, this apex of happiness went "pear shaped".  Perhaps this alludes to why James' seven former members are where they are now - in four or five separate musical ventures after having just released on cd & dvd one of their final concert performances together last December.

That said, James' loss is our gain; I am looking forward to the other side of Kulas' musical coin and hearing his next full band set in Toronto - perhaps at Healey's in the next month.